འཕགས་པ་དྲ་མ་མད་པར་གྲགས་པས་བསྟན་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད 51

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and his consciousness of working for the welfare of living beings. He should encourage him to manifest the roots of virtue, to maintain the primal purity and the lack of craving, and thus to always strive to become the king of healers, who can cure all sicknesses. Thus should a bodhisattva console a sick bodhisattva, in such a way as to make him happy.

Mañjuśrī asked, “‌Noble sir, how should a sick bodhisattva control his own mind?”

Vimalakīrti replied, “Mañjuśrī, a sick bodhisattva should control his own mind with the following consideration: Sickness arises from total involvement in the process of misunderstanding from beginningless time. It arises from the afflictions that result from unreal mental constructions, and hence ultimately nothing is perceived which can be said to be sick. Why? The body is the issue of the four main elements, and in these elements there is no owner and no agent. There is no self in this body, and, except for arbitrary insistence on self, ultimately no ‘I’ which can be said to be sick can be apprehended. Therefore, thinking, ‘ “I” should not adhere to any self, and “I” should rest in the knowledge of the root of illness,’ he should abandon the conception of himself as a personality and produce the conception of himself as a thing, thinking, ‘This body is an aggregate of many things. When it is born, only things are born; when it ceases, only things cease. These things have no awareness or feeling of each other. When they are born, they do not think, “I am born”; when they cease, they do not think, “I cease.” ’

“Furthermore, he should understand thoroughly the conception of himself as a thing by cultivating the following consideration: ‘Just as in the case of the conception of “self,” so the conception of “thing” is also a misunderstanding, and this misunderstanding is also a grave sickness; I should free myself from this sickness and should strive to abandon it.’¹²⁰

“What is the elimination of this sickness? It is the elimination of egoism